handwavium
Syllables: hand·wav·i·um/handˈweɪ.vi.əm/US/hændˈweɪ.vi.əm/
handwavium noun: any hypothetical but unobtainable material with desirable engineering properties.
Noun
handwavium (uncountable)
- Any hypothetical but unobtainable material with desirable engineering properties.
- My handwavium was an invented mineral, but - reading up - what about platinum? Could I substitute platinum for handwavium?2008 February 3, Jacey Bedford <jacey@artisan-harmony.com>, “Handwavium”, in rec.arts.sf.composition (Usenet)
- It made no sense to him that their very impossibility was their pleasure. He puzzled over the spacecraft and their handwavium drives. "The thousand and one nights of Scheherazade, told by an engineering student who failed his graduation exams," was his literary judgment.2008 March, Alexander Jablokov, “The Boarder”, in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, volume 114, number 3, Concord, N.H.: Fantasy House, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 9
- Synonyms:
- unobtainium
Synonyms of handwavium
Origin of handwavium
From hand waving + -ium (“the chemical element suffix”).
Questions about handwavium
- What does handwavium mean?
- Handwavium means any hypothetical but unobtainable material with desirable engineering properties.
- What part of speech is handwavium?
- Handwavium is a noun.
- How do you pronounce handwavium?
- Handwavium is pronounced /handˈweɪ.vi.əm/ (UK).
Words near handwavium in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: handwavium (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-handwavium.wav.
Cite this entry: “handwavium.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/handwavium. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.